ALBANY, NY (WSKG) – Saturday is the deadline for voters in the state’s school board and school budget elections to get their ballots in the mail. There will be no in person voting in the June 9th elections, due to safety precautions because of the coronavirus pandemic .

All voting will be by mail. Under an executive order by Governor Andrew Cuomo, all voters are permitted to use the absentee ballot option to cast their votes. Schools, closed for months because of the COVID-19 pandemic, will not have polling places this year.

“It is all by absentee ballot,” said Robert Schneider, executive director of the New York State School Boards Association.

In an interview via Skype. Schneider says that means voters who don’t want to drop ballots off through a slot, have to mail them by Saturday, to get them to the schools in time for the deadline.

Because of the many disruptions in supply chains due to the COVID-19 pandemic , some districts had a shortage of envelopes to use to send out ballots to voters, but Schneider says they were able to find enough to send them out in time.

Perhaps an even bigger challenge facing schools is that districts presenting their proposed budgets to voters don’t really know how much money they will receive from the state.

New York faces a $13 billion dollar deficit, after revenues plummeted due to the economic shutdown in response to the pandemic . Cuomo has said repeatedly that if a fourth federal relief package does not include money for state and local governments, $8 billion dollars in cuts will need to be made.

“You’d be cutting schools 20% , local governments 20% and hospitals 20%”, Cuomo said on April 20th. “This is the worst time to do this.”

Democrats who lead the House of Representatives have approved a $3 Trillion dollar package that includes money to help states that were hit hard by the virus balance their budgets. Republicans who lead the Senate say they want to pause the relief packages for a while, to judge the results of the earlier measures.

Schneider says most schools are budgeting with little hard data.

“The word is uncertainty” Schneider said. “ We don’t know what’s going to happen and it’s very tough for our school districts to budget.”

Many districts are recommending staff and program reductions, or relying on attrition and early retirement incentives to cut costs. Others are dipping into reserve funds. Schneider says without a federal bail out package, the cuts are “ going to fall on the backs of our students” and he predicts music, sports and language programs and advanced placement classes will be eliminated.

Schneider says most schools are not seeking increased revenues from property tax payers to make up for the potential shortfall from the state, and nearly all are staying within the 2% per year property tax cap.

To add to the uncertainty, schools are not even sure right now whether they will fully reopen in the fall. Schneider says districts are working with the Board of Regents and State Education Department on a task force to come up with plans that may include socially distanced learning at schools, staggered lunches and fewer seats in classrooms, and having children attend school on alternate weeks. He says there are still many unanswered questions.

“It all depends on the health and science and the data , can we open schools in September safely?” Schneider asks. “We’re not there yet.”

Schneider says the supplies needed for re opening , including hand sanitizer and personal protective equipment, as well as physical modifications to classrooms and school buses, will only add to schools’ expenses.

PA POST – Gov. Tom Wolf said Friday he’s confident that Pennsylvania students will return to their schools this fall.

“No question,” Wolf said during a news conference at the headquarters of the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency in Dauphin County.

Ed Mahon / PA Post Gov. Tom Wolf stands at the podium at the start of his first in-person press conference since March. Wolf and Health Secretary Rachel Levine spoke to the press from the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency in Harrisburg.

“Now, schools will look different. I mean, you’ll probably have more online learning. And maybe less classroom learning,” Wolf said. “There might be fewer students in each classroom on average — that kind of thing.”

The governor said the Pennsylvania Department of Education plans to issue guidance to schools next week.

Responding to a question from a reporter, Wolf acknowledged the possibility that schools might not reopen. But he downplayed that possibility, saying that “if a comet strikes” the state might have to change its plans.

Wolf led off the press conference by offering his condolences to the family of George Floyd, the African-American man who died during an arrest in Minneapolis on Monday.

“It reminds us what we need to do here in Pennsylvania as well. This happened in Minnesota, far away, different state. But every one of us, each and every one of us in Pennsylvania has a stake in making sure our society is fair, that we treat everybody equally,” Wolf said.

The other highlight of the gathering was Wolf’s announcement that much of western Pennsylvania will move to the green phase of his coronavirus reopening plan, including Pittsburgh and surrounding Allegheny County. The additional counties moving to green next Friday are Armstrong, Bedford, Blair, Butler, Cambria, Clinton, Fayette, Fulton, Greene, Indiana, Lycoming, Mercer, Somerset, Washington and Westmoreland counties.

Philadelphia and the collar counties in southeastern Pennsylvania will shift to the yellow phase, he confirmed. The last counties under the tightest virus restrictions, home to some of the most populous communities in the state, will start to reopen next Friday, June 5. Besides Philadelphia County, they include Berks, Bucks, Chester, Delaware, Lackawanna, Lancaster, Lehigh, Northampton, and Montgomery counties.

The governor also said he signed the nearly $26 billion interim state budget. The plan includes a full year’s worth of funding for many education line items. Many other parts of the state budget are only funded for five months.

» PA Post is an independent newsroom covering policy and government in Pennsylvania. For more, go to www.papost.org.

ENFIELD, NY (WSKG) – Governor Andrew Cuomo and President Trump met at the White House on Wednesday to discuss New York’s need for federal aid. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, New York had state budget troubles.

For weeks, the Governor has warned, without federal assistance, there would be drastic cuts in state aid to local governments, and would include police, firefighters and school districts.

To eliminate the deficit, Assemblywoman Barbara Lifton said cuts would be required in all parts of the state budget.

Celia Clarke/WSKG Public Radio

Barbara Lifton

“If we have to make cuts it won’t just be to schools it will be to everything, I suspect,” Lifton said. “I mean, my guess is the governor’s not going to put it all in education or all in healthcare, it’ll get spread across–and the two biggest things we fund are pre-K through twelve education and higher ed and, and Medicaid and healthcare to hospitals and nursing homes.”

Lifton represents a district that includes Tompkins and parts of Cortland counties.

“I suspect you’d see transportation cuts, you’d see social services. I don’t know how you cut social services they’re already so barebones.”

Lifton said cuts would likely include healthcare support to hospitals and nursing homes.

“It would just be a disaster. It’s, it would just be awful in every area,” she said.

SYRACUSE, NY (WRVO) – The academic year at many colleges just came to a close but faculty at several central New York institutions are already making decisions that will affect the fall semester as they wrestle with the uncertainty caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY

When Syracuse University students return to campus later this year, it will be on an “accelerated” schedule. Officials announced last week that classes will end as of Thanksgiving Break. Some classes may meet on Fridays or even on weekends to accommodate the shorter timeline. Additionally, most of SU’s in-person classes will be offered in an online format simultaneously to accommodate any students who become ill.

Binghamton University’s president said that students will return to campus this fall as well, but more details are forthcoming.

SUNY Oswego officials have yet to make any formal changes to the fall semester, but the college is offering all first-year students the opportunity to get a jump start by taking an online class this summer. SUNY Oswego Provost Scott Furlong said while the decision to make the course available was not motivated by the pandemic, it will give many of their incoming students a chance to prepare for what classes may be like if the virus resurges.

“Particularly for students who have never taken an online course, if we are in a situation where we have to do a major transition like we did this past spring, I think taking the online course will have a little bit more practice with that shift than those who might not have had that,” Furlong said.

He said the class will also give students who would normally be working the summer before college but cannot now because of the statewide shutdown a chance to get their feet wet with the collegiate experience and engage with the college’s faculty.

Schools and colleges are in the last phase of New York’s region-by-region reopening.

Others, like leading national disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci, preach caution, warning that there’s much we don’t yet know about this virus and pointing to emerging evidence of a strange, virus-related disorder attacking young children.

To understand the context behind these various guidelines, it helps to go back to basics.

Why did we close schools at all?

Short answer: historical precedent.

Evidence from the 1918 flu pandemic suggests cities that closed their schools early and for long periods fared better than their counterparts. St. Louis — the oft-cited standard from that era for viral suppression — closed its schools for 143 days.

But you don’t need to rewind the clock that far for evidence of effectiveness, says Dr. Esther Chernak, an infectious disease expert at Drexel University in Philadelphia. Studies of more recent influenza pandemics — in 1957, 1968 and 2009 — led scientists to believe that schools can accelerate disease spread.

The logic is clear. Kids go to school, swap germs and the virus rages.

That’s why “the first impulse with this pandemic was to close schools, thinking that perhaps children are important drivers of community-wide transmission,” said Chernak.

So, did it work?

Short answer: Well…

There are many complicating variables here, experts say.

For starters, school closures happened simultaneously with lots of other public health measures.

“Disentangling which of your moves actually produced the most value is really challenging because they all happened at the same time,” said Rubin.

Then there’s the specific pathology of SARS-CoV-2, the virus at the heart of the outbreak.

It’s clear the virus does not kill or sicken children at the same rate as adults — particularly the elderly. That doesn’t mean children can’t spread the virus among each other, and then eventually to their older relatives.

Given those tradeoffs and the lack of clear scientific evidence, do we really want to keep schools closed or significantly change the way they operate?

That’s the question facing decision-makers right now.

Min Xian / Keystone Crossroads. A teacher reads to kids at Step by Step School for Early Learning in State College, Pa.

What’s next?

Short answer: lingering uncertainty.

Even for those who question the global value of school closures, there’s still plenty to be cautious about moving forward.

Rubin — the same expert who called the scientific evidence on school closures “weak” — spearheaded CHOP’s new memo recommending major changes to the ways schools operate.

That’s because “the lack of evidence doesn’t mean that there isn’t a risk,” he said.

Governors, health officials and education leaders will likely have to make decisions about school next fall before having a clear grasp on the way this disease spreads within schools.

That’s not to say there will be no new evidence. Schools in parts of Europe and Asia have remained open or are starting to reopen.

“Looking at other countries is going to be a good thermometer to let us know what might not work,” said Krys Johnson, an epidemiologist and biostatistician at Temple University, who is part of conversation on how to open her campus.

Esther Chernak, from Drexel, says the approaches of different countries will provide “for better or for worse … a series of natural experiments” so scientists can start gauging which interventions were the most meaningful.

Even in the best-case scenarios, reopenings in Europe won’t begin to provide clear insights for at least a month, experts say. That’s on the short end.

The fall term starts for many local schools in August, with teachers expected back earlier.

That means policy-makers likely won’t have the benefit of scientific certainty when they make decisions. As a result, Rubin said, schools won’t be in a position to swing open their doors and go straight back to normal.

“It’s not an on/off switch,” Rubin said. “We have to think of it as a dimmer switch.”

What is the greatest concern?

Short answer: protecting adults.

The recommendations made by Rubin’s team are largely designed to protect adults from contracting the coronavirus and to combat the type of disease spread thought to be most common among children.

As we know, children aren’t at particularly high risk for COVID-19.

Much of the strategy, therefore, is geared toward protecting adults who work in school buildings and protecting adults who take care of children.

The memo recommends plastic visors for teachers and flexible policies that allow older staff to remain home. The same flexibility is extended to children who live with elderly or immunocompromised caretakers.

Adults in schools pose two risks. Not only are they more likely to get the disease themselves, but experts say they’re more likely to develop respiratory symptoms, such as a bad cough. When an ill person starts coughing, it can lead to explosive, exponential spread.

Wearing a mask or visor can protect adults from getting sick, while also keeping their respiratory germs contained if they do have an undetected case of the coronavirus.

“The people at greatest risk … are the teachers and the staff,” said Rubin. “And those folks have to have their own set of hygiene and prevention. A lot of the testing needs to be focused on them.”

Children seem less prone to developing a coronavirus-related cough. The primary concern with kids is them spreading the disease through fomite transmission — meaning they leave germs on a surface, followed by someone touching that surface and eventually touching their face.

That’s why you’ll see a major focus on disinfection. Purell stations at every door, separate cubbies for all belongings, and strict hand-washing regimens are all geared toward preventing fomite spread.

All of that said, children are not immune from serious illness or death themselves. Scientists are still trying to understand a mysterious inflammatory syndrome linked to the coronavirus that seems to affect school-aged children. The ailment has killed three already in New York State and sickened over 100.

On a population level, the risk may be low — but it’s a risk policy-makers and parents will need to confront whenever students return to school.

“Everybody is somebody’s kid and every kid has some non-zero probability of becoming a severe case,” said Bharti from Penn State.

When does ‘normal’ return?

Short answer: We don’t know.

What we do know, experts say, is that widespread testing paves the road back to normalcy.

The absence of testing creates risk. Without it, health officials don’t know how well an intervention is working and can’t immediately know if another outbreak has begun.

It becomes easier to peel back safety measures when scientists are confident they can quickly track — and tamp down — any viral flare up.

In Germany, for instance, some newly reopened schools are testing students twice a week on a trial basis. The data from that pilot should help scientists understand transmission rates within school and corral any potential outbreaks.

“I think the key is testing within the school environment itself, but also really aggressive testing outside the school environment so we can feel confident that a low case number is real — that it truly reflects low transmission within the community,” said Chernak from Drexel.

Krys Johnson from Temple would like to see community spread near zero before schools reopen — essentially a scenario where health officials can track the origin of individual cases. She doesn’t think Philadelphia will have hit that benchmark by early autumn.

Rubin, from CHOP, doesn’t have a firm epidemiological threshold he’d like areas to meet before schools return. His focus is more on testing capacity.

“I’d like to see strong surveillance and testing in place,” he said. “[That way], should there be a resurgence, you can quickly identify it.”

Bharti agrees that testing capacity is crucial. She’s worried, however, about the ability to create widespread testing in parts of the state where medical infrastructure tends to be thinner.

“The scaling up and strengthening of health systems is definitely not favorable for rural areas,” said Bharti.

After being criticized by GOP leaders such as Turzai for suggesting that schools could remain closed into the fall, Pennsylvania Secretary of Education Pedro Rivera clarified that he believes schools will open when the next school year begins.

“The Department of Education fully expects students to return to school in the fall in some capacity and is currently developing a plan to help guide schools as they prepare for the new academic year,” the department said in a statement.

“In some capacity” is where the mystery lies — a mystery bound up in logistics, resources and the ongoing vagaries of a new and deadly disease.

Keystone Crossroads is a statewide reporting collaborative of WITF, WPSU and WESA, led by WHYY. This story originally appeared

KEYSTONE CROSSROADS — A pair of Bucks County families have sued Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, Education Secretary Pedro Rivera and the Pa. Department of Education in federal court, alleging that online education for children with autism during the coronavirus school shutdown has been insufficient.

In a class-action suit filed this week, the families — whose full names are not revealed in the complaint — claim that “online learning is wholly inadequate to meet the needs of nonverbal and partially verbal children with autism who rely upon…in-person instruction.”

The case raises key legal, financial, and ethical questions. Namely, are kids with special needs getting the education they deserve during the coronavirus pandemic? And if they aren’t, will districts have to pay?

The education of special-needs children has loomed large since Pennsylvania schools closed in mid-March, in part because of federal law that protects the rights of students with disabilities. That law requires districts to provide individualized services to students with special needs, a task complicated by the sudden switch to virtual schooling.

Many Pennsylvania districts initially resisted doing any form of online instruction because they were worried it would open them up to special-education lawsuits and concerns about inequities. Federal and state officials ultimately rejected that posture — urging school districts to make a best-faith effort for all students, including those with disabilities.

That left a massive and unprecedented legal grey area, one that will be tested by this suit and, presumably, others like it to come.

This case is filed on behalf of all public school students in Pennsylvania who have autism and are either nonverbal or partially verbal. The lead plaintiffs — named only as James and Brennan in the suit — attend the Central Bucks School District.

The suit says that, despite the best efforts of teachers, students James and Brennan, both 7, have received just over an hour a week of virtual education. And it claims that critical services have evaporated.

For instance, it says that non-verbal students like James require special instruction that involves a teacher physically guiding their hands while they complete a task.

The suit requests “compensatory damages” for students represented by the class action and asks the court to strike down Pennsylvania’s ban against in-person school services for nonverbal and partially verbal children with autism.

Attorneys representing the children criticize Gov. Wolf for not mandating districts provide more robust in-person special education services even as some private special education programs continue to operate as “life sustaining” businesses.

“This carefully thought-out timeframe provides our faculty with the opportunity to fully prepare to deliver the strongest educational experience,” Collado stated, “and for our staff to fully map out their work and put solid, responsive plans in place around our emergency health and safety management.”

screen capture, Celia Clarke/WSKG Public Radio

Ithaca College President, Shirley Collado. Ithaca College announced classes on campus will resume October 5. (screen capture, Celia Clarke/WSKG Public Radio)

Collado said the College is aligning its plans with New York State’s reopening guidelines.

Ithaca College moved its classes online on March 23. The first positive case of COVID-19 in Tompkins County was announced on March 14. It was later reported the patient is a member of the Ithaca College community.

]]>Child Care Centers In PA: Bellwether For How Tricky It Will Be To Fully Reopen Economyhttps://wskg.org/news/child-care-centers-in-pa-bellwether-for-how-tricky-it-will-be-to-fully-reopen-economy/
Mon, 18 May 2020 12:26:40 +0000https://wskg.org/?p=944704

KEYSTONE CROSSROADS – In some ways, Rachel Johnson is grateful for Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf’s mid-March business shutdown order: it took the agonizing decision over whether to close the child care center she runs with her husband out of their hands.

A teacher reads to kids at Step by Step School for Early Learning in State College, Pa. (Min Xian/Keystone Crossroads)

“It was sad and scary, but in a way, easy, because the choice was made for us,” said Johnson, 36, who runs Step by Step School for Early Learning in Centre County. “It was like, ‘Ok, we have to close.’ There was nothing to think about.”

Before the pandemic, Step by Step had three locations in the State College area, serving 300 children and employing 65 teachers. The business was able to get a waiver to remain open to serve the children of essential workers, but only 14 of them kept coming, forcing the Johnsons to lay off all but five teachers. The business got a federal Paycheck Protection Program loan, but the couple has struggled to pay their most pressing bills without violating its terms.

They’ve mostly gotten by on savings instead.

On May 8, their fortunes shifted: Centre County was one of the first 24 counties that Gov. Wolf moved into the ‘yellow’ phase of reopening. In that phase more businesses are allowed to open, as well as all child care providers. Thirteen more counties entered this phase on Friday and 12 more will on May 22.

The Johnsons reopened their center May 11, but it wasn’t a simple call.

A teacher at at Step by Step School for Early Learning in State College, Pa. puts a mask on a two-year-old. (Min Xian/Keystone Crossroads)

“Our job is to provide [parents] with care so they can go and do their job” said Robert Johnson, Rachel’s husband. “[But] the financial aspect of it, if you would sit there and crunch numbers, it would not be an easy decision.”

The problem is demand: only a few dozen of Step by Step’s kids have returned so far. Most of their parents are still working from home, the Johnsons said, and many are uneasy about sending their kids into any kind of group setting. Meanwhile, the couple is still paying rent, mortgages, and utilities on facilities that can hold many more students. They’ve also rehired twenty of their teachers, allowing for a much smaller a student-to-staff ratio than normal — a costly decision — so the center can maintain small groups and minimize cross-contamination.

All this, Rachel said, has put them in a somewhat uncomfortable position.

“You almost look like the bad guy by trying to convince [parents] to send their kids back,” she said. “Going out there and saying ‘support your local economy’ is going to make you look bad if at the same time you are saying ‘put your kids in danger.’”

As idled businesses begin to restart and more employees return to the job across the state, child care providers in ‘yellow’ counties say they are reopening slowly, if at all. The pace is driven by new safety guidelines, and by nervous parents reluctant to send their kids out of the house. If the industry doesn’t see demand pickup or receive financial aid soon, advocates warn, providers could begin closing for good — possibly slowing the state’s economic recovery.

“Child care is a business, like all of the others that are struggling through this crisis,” said Jen DeBell, executive director of the Pennsylvania Association for the Education of Young Children. “But this business is the one that everyone else relies upon, to make sure families can work.”

‘A lot of them need the money’

Those guidelines include emphasizing social distancing, more cleaning and disinfecting, modified pickup and dropoff procedures, and masks on children older than two.

The state’s Office of Child Development and Early Learning (OCDEL) has done a good job communicating these guidelines to child care providers, said Diane Barber, executive director of the Pennsylvania Child Care Association. But she said providers are struggling to find enough supplies to meet them.

“I’ve heard stories of people, you know, on a weekend, making trips to seven different stores before they can find enough supplies to open for a week,” Barber said.

Jolie Clover runs Begin With Us Child Care and Preschool in Blair County. That county moved into ‘yellow’ status on May 15, but Clover says she doesn’t plan to reopen until June, in part due to difficulties finding supplies.

A stack of cleaning and sanitizing supplies in the toddler’s room at Step by Step School for Early Learning in State College, Pa. (Min Xian/Keystone Crossroads)

“It has been very challenging,” Clover said. “We get excited when we put them in our cart online, but then we go to checkout, and we are limited in quantities.”

Pennsylvania received $106 million in federal stimulus funding to support child care in the state through the CARES act. Barber and other industry advocates want Pennsylvania to follow other states’ lead in giving that money to providers to help them purchase supplies, as well as subsidize those with low attendance, or that remain closed. But so far state officials have declined to offer specifics on how or when the money will be spent.

“Those are conversations we are having with the governor’s office and the legislature,” Department of Human Services Secretary Theresa Miller said on a media call last week. “But hopefully we will be able to do that soon.”

Providers in counties that are now reopening don’t have any time to spare, said Jen DeBell: “a lot of them need the money right now.”

‘They’re scared’

While comprehensive data is not yet available, advocates said most child care providers that have reopened are nowhere near capacity.

“All programs are telling us [attendance] is like a quarter, maybe half,” Debell said. “A lot of them … think by July they will be at capacity.”

Harkins is the associate executive director at Early Connections Erie, which served about 300 children a week at six centers across Erie County before the pandemic.

During the shutdown, the provider’s administrative staff spent weeks stockpiling cleaning supplies — sourcing hand sanitizers from local distilleries and buying rain ponchos for staff who take childrens’ temperatures upon entering.

A two-year-old washes his hands at Step by Step School for Early Learning in State College, Pa. (Min Xian/Keystone Crossroads)

Still, when Early Connections reopened last week, less than 30% of its kids returned.

“It was a lot less than we expected,” said Harkins. “I think the parents are just waiting, holding off. I think they’re scared.”

Rashauna Holman decided to bring her daughter back to the center.

Holman, 30, works as a shift manager at a local convenience store, a position considered essential during the shutdown. When her nine-year-old daughters’ school and then day care shut down in March, the single mother had to scramble.

“I was like OK, how am I going to do this?” Holman said. “I [didn’t] want to put the burden on my father to watch my daughter, but he is all that I have.”

For the last two months her daughter has spent most of her time at Holman’s dad’s house. It was a big ask: Holman’s dad has diabetes, and he also takes care of his wife, who has dementia.

When day care reopened Holman was grateful. But she was also nervous.

“I was kind of scared,” Holman said. “I didn’t know what to think. The teachers: have they been out of the country? Have they been in contact with any family members or anybody who has it?”

Holman said she was relieved to learn there were only a few students in her daughter’s class, and to hear about new hand-washing procedures.

But that might not be enough.

“I am still kind of thinking I may take her out of day care,” Holman said. “I don’t know.”

]]>How COVID-19 is changing June 9 school district voteshttps://wskg.org/news/how-covid-19-is-changing-june-9-school-district-votes/
Thu, 14 May 2020 11:53:58 +0000https://wskg.org/?p=941589

BUFFALO, NY (WBFO) – It has been a rite of spring in New York State’s suburbs and small cities: the annual budget debate and selection of members for the local school board. Usually it includes lines at polling spaces, occasionally contentious budget meetings and debates over education, but like everything else, it is different this season.

KYLE S. MACKIE / WBFO NEWS

This year, it is virtual meetings and absentee balloting. Gov. Andrew Cuomo ordered a change in the voting date, virtual meetings and the absentee ballots because of New York PAUSE and the COVID-19 crisis.

That brings in the lawyers, making sure everything is being done by the new rules and to help understand those new rules. Lawyer Andrew Freedman said a first sign of the new day is the absentee ballots that will be popping up in resident mailboxes in the next week or so. Freedman said this means districts have to identify who the voters are.

“What a school district needs to do is to be able to identify all qualified voters within its boundaries and send absentee ballots to them,” said Freedman, a partner at Hodgson Russ said. “The challenge has been that school districts don’t have a list of all qualified voters within a school district, so identifying those individuals has been challenging.”

A veteran school district attorney, Freedman said there are some quirks that have to be settled: the college kid who is suddenly back in the house after registering to vote at school or the visiting relatives bunkered down in the house during quarantine. He said both probably meet the 30 days of residence rule of state law to vote on the budget and board members.

Freedman said residents will find out the details of what is happening in their snail mail and email.

“The link for the meeting may be found at whatever website, and the folks click on that link and they attend the meetings and they get to hear the debates,” he said, “and even some districts have been sophisticated enough to have real-time questions and answers.”

School votes are June 9. Freedman said this might foretell the future of elections.

“Set out the schools as a test case for how do elections look like when done by absentee ballots,” he said. “So we’re here to set the stage for what might be coming up or is coming up in later June and then also, too, for what might be the elections in November.”

Cornell’s Rob Scott said 225 inmates in the Finger Lakes region were enrolled in the school’s prison education program for the spring semester. However, because of the pandemic, classes have ended.

Scott said online instruction is not available for incarcerated students.

“Offering college classes to congregations of people who cannot social distance inside of a prison facility is not essential,” he said. “The essential thing is keeping people alive.”

Instead, Scott said, the focus has shifted to getting masks to inmates.

“Though we might not think of these folks as permanent residents of our counties, the folks that are incarcerated in the prisons in our region are potentially a huge source of contagion if we don’t treat them the same way and keep them safe from infection just like everyone else,” Scott said.

Colleges and universities involved in the New York Consortium for Higher Education in Prison solicited donations, ordered the masks and ensured they were distributed to inmates across the state.

So far, about 9,000 washable masks made by Mozaic have been sent out, and 34,000 more are expected to be made.